Ep. 66 Fritz Leiber Double Feature

"She is all merciless night animal...yet with a wisdom that goes
back to Egypt and beyond - and which is invaluable to me. For she
is my spy on buildings, you see, my intelligencer on metropolitan
megastructures. She knows their secrets and their secret
weaknesses, their ponderous rhythms and dark songs. And she herself
is secret as their shadows. She is my Queen of Night, Our Lady of
Darkness." In two books written nearly 25 years apart, "weird
fiction" guru Fritz Leiber examined how ancient witchcraft and
black magic continue to prey malignantly on unsuspecting
contemporary characters deeply entrenched in the rational. Whether
it's faculty wives hexing a sociology professor in CONJURE WIFE or
the paramental entities tormenting a writer in San Francisco in OUR
LADY OF DARKNESS, Leiber sees modern life as a conduit for a "new
science" of the supernatural, which we dig into with this
horror-themed October episode! Our guest is Rebecca Baumann, head
of public services at Lilly Library, curator of the 2018 exhibition
Frankenstein 200: The Birth, Life and Resurrection of Mary
Shelley's Monster and avid collector of genre fiction. Baumann
shares her take on these essential "weird" tales as well as
details of Leiber's life that offer rare insight into his
perspective on femininity. (Also on how to pronounce his name,
which John gets wrong through most of the episode.) The Pink Smoke
site: 
www.thepinksmoke.com Support our Patreon:
www.patreon.com/thepinksmoke For the Frankenstein 200 book:
https://iupress.org/9780253039057/frankenstein-200/ Hellebore issue
discussed in the episode:
https://helleborezine.bigcartel.com/product/hellebore-3-the-malefice-issue
The Pink Smoke on Twitter:
 twitter.com/thepinksmoke Rebecca
Baumann on Twitter: twitter.com/arkhamlibrarian John Cribbs on
Twitter: twitter.com/TheLastMachine Intro music: Unleash the
Bastards / “Tea for Two” Outro music: Marcus Pinn / “Vegas”